


Mike's Charge

by Ariibees



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Gen, Murder, Not Canon Compliant, Rewrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25785976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariibees/pseuds/Ariibees
Summary: After only a few days on the job, Mike makes a rookie mistake and is killed, stuffed into an empty suit and left to rot by the animatronics he was assigned to watch over at night. Reawakening in a sick sort of limbo with his soul trapped in the brand-new Wyless Wolf suit, and finding himself to be the only (trustworthy) adult left in the pizzeria, he must learn to step up into the role of a parent that a few troubled children desperately need. And then maybe, just maybe, they’ll finally be able to move on.(Fanfic rewrite from 2015/2016).
Comments: 21
Kudos: 69





	1. A Rookie Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> Something like five or so years ago, I wrote some quite, ah, awful FNaF fanfiction and tossed it up on fanfiction.net and Quotev, where it inexplicably blew up and got a combined 50,000+ views. Today, I saw that someone had actually favorited my old fanfic, got hit with a wave of nostalgia, and decided to sit down and see what I could salvage from my old drafts.
> 
> Here’s what needs to be known before reading this fic: I actually started writing this story right maybe a few months before FNaF4 came out, at which point I completely dropped out of the fandom. What this means is that I know almost nothing at all about the actual franchise or plot that came about after 2016! However, seeing as this story is five years old, I’ve certainly had the time to develop my own storyline and world since then. So, what that means for this story is that it is not going to work with recent canon material in the slightest. The only reference to any of the later material is that one of the characters is named Will as a small nod. While I’m only rewriting this for fun, I will try to keep up with frequent updates, so if you’re reading this in 2020, thank you. :)

Mike Schmidt ran a shaky hand through his dark hair, locks still combed and neat -- by the end of each shift, said hair was typically left tangled and messy from sweat and movement. He tugged his uniform cap on once more, off-yellow letters spelling out “GUARD” along the front, making sure it was properly tightened in the back. It had only taken one night of leaping to and fro, hands desperately clutching his tablet and frantically smacking the buttons for the lights and doors, for him to realize that either he shouldn’t bother wearing the hat, or he had to be sure it was adjusted tight enough that it wouldn’t fall off.

Little distractions could mean big consequences, after all.

He steadied his breathing, swallowed around a growing lump in his throat, and watched as the clock in the corner of the tablet clicked over to midnight. And thus, his shift began! Another night of fun and horror at Freddy Fazbear’s, and another twenty-five bucks in his pocket. After all, who didn’t simply adore being paid minimum wage to be hunted for sport?

He kept a death-grip on the tablet. Thick and clunky, with the very bottom-right corner of the screen cracked and an awful penchant to glitch out on him, the tablet was just another way for the company to make his life a living hell. Cutting corners every chance they had, it seemed, from the shoddy desk fan to the peeling notices tacked up to the office walls.

Wasn’t too surprising, though. Based on the latest, shiny-new posters hung by the establishment’s entrance, they were soon to be introducing two new animatronics to the mix: a bouncy, cute tiger and a collected, adventurous wolf.

Yeah, he planned to quit long before any more freaks joined the circus.

He flipped between the cameras, just long enough for each one to clear of static before jumping to the next; he couldn’t afford to waste the tablet’s battery life, considering the building itself seemed to have shoddy power as it was. Thankfully, the curtains were still closed over by Pirate’s Cove, and Freddy hadn’t moved at all thus far that night. What brought him more worry was finding Bonny lingering in the supply closet and Chica lurking in the shadows of the main party room, and he kept an ear out for any movement echoing through the halls.

Soft pattering. A noise he’d recognize anywhere, deceptively light considering what monsters made it, whispering into his left ear as unintelligible please. Someone was on the move, and he tensed -- when a shadow flickered with the left door light, panicked reflexes kicked in, and he spun out of his chair, palm mashing into the door button. Heavy metal slid into place, and his heartbeat thudded out of his chest, hands trembling too much to properly work the tablet.

Still, his frantic movements slowed with the brief respite the shut door allowed, and while it remained a constant drain on the power supply, so long as he was careful...well, hopefully he’d be alright. As soon as Bonnie slipped away from the door, it’d slide open once more, and with any luck, it’d be some time before he saw the purple (or was he blue?) animatronic that performed during the day and hunted him at night.

That was the one good thing about the animatronics: they didn’t rush him, and while relentless, they didn’t linger long if he blocked their advances. They bounced between the depths of the establishment and Mike’s office as though they were playing a game, never staying for more than a few minutes and often remaining in clear view of the cameras. Case in point: muffled footsteps sounded off once again to his left. Mike steadied himself enough to check the cameras, seeing that the curtains around Foxy’s hiding place had begun to peak open, but the dilapidated animatronic had not left his place. That meant that Bonnie must have gotten bored and walked off.

He opened the door. There was no room to waste any more power than he had to. That idiot, cheapskate owner only allowed for a certain electric withdrawal overnight before the breakers tripped and everything shut off. As such, Mike was left wrestling with and balancing every little thing he did, armed with the knowledge that even when at rest the desk fan and overhead lights sucked away the power reserves. Using the window lights, cameras, and especially the damn _electromagnetically-operated doors_ (of all things to have installed at a children’s eatery! Although, if he wanted to play devil’s advocate, surely fending off murderous animatronics was a good justification for having them) drew away the power even faster.

By this point, he was really starting to understand why the magic words to getting hired had been “sure, I can work the night shift!” He hadn’t even needed to present a security license, hadn’t had to get any references, barely needed an acceptable resume! All it took was to show up on time, and he got the job for Fazbear Entertainment. He hesitated to refer to the company as a franchise, although he could vaguely recall advertisements from his childhood for the restaurant itself, plus any extra locations, short TV miniseries, and toy lines.

Another worried glance to the tablet. Foxy hadn’t moved, and while Freddy had finally stepped off of the stage, none of the animatronics had moved too near his office. A short respite, it seemed; he took the opportunity to take a sip of his coffee, but barely tasted the bitter liquid. He went more for function than taste, as while adjusting to working the night shift hadn’t been _too_ difficult, staying alert was harder, even with adrenaline pumping through his veins. Even after working at Freddy’s for some time already, the animatronics were finicky and difficult to deal with (to say the least!) and he often left at six AM mentally and physically exhausted.

That was going to end soon enough, though. He’d quite this hellhole as soon as he found another job -- because while he was fully aware of the dangers he was facing here, and despite knowing that the place paid horribly, he was struggling for interviews elsewhere and he had rent to pay.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up all at once, a strangled cry leaving his throat as he leapt back to his feet and smacked the door button -- the right one, thus time. Chica had slipped up while he had been distracted, caught up in his thoughts.

A metallic clang from the now-shut door, and he returned to flipping over the cameras. Foxy was now gaping at him from the cove; he had to remain vigilant.

Animatronics. Assuming he got out of this place with his mind still intact, it would be a tall order for him to ever be comfortable near one of those things again, even if they were the endearingly awful variant found in amusement park theme rides. He didn’t have anything against the mere idea of such robots; hell, they were pretty cool from a technology standpoint. But said technology was the problem, wasn’t it? If his on-the-job training instructor’s words were anything to go by (although said instructor may or may not have been the most truthful at times, and may or may not currently be dead if his final messages were any indication), the robotic animals were just following their code. They had been introduced with a simple form of AI that, for the most part, would leave them either performing in place, or absently wandering; staying still for too long would lock up their servos and cost the company a fortune in repairing or replacing the parts, after all. When one came too close, perhaps due to the poor lighting of the office, it would falsely register Mike’s terrified face as an endoskeleton -- and endoskeletons were simply animatronics, programmed just the same, that had falsely been set loose without a suit on over them. So, to cut down on the difficulty of staff members having to wrestle a literal robot, all the animatronics were designed to be able to stuff a free endoskeleton into the nearest available suit.

Theoretically, it was a great system! A real culmination of computer recognition and AI technology becoming prevalent in common products.

The problem was when it didn’t work, and he considered “being driven to murder” very much as _not working._ That said, he couldn’t exactly blame a sentient machine, though if he ever met the man who built the damn things he might be tempted to strangle the guy.

Test the lights. Check the cameras. Take a sip of coffee that was rapidly cooling, a side-effect of his terribly-insulated cup. The animatronics had no “off” button, aside from perhaps if they ran out of battery life, but that once again brought about the threat of damaged servos, and he couldn’t afford to be hit with a small-claims court charge of “malicious destruction of company property” or something like that.

Once again returning to his pattern, he checked the door lights. All was clear to the left, but Chica had returned to the right, and with a “Gah-!” he jumped and shut the door on her. Moments later, he was back in his swivel chair, tablet in his hands as he swiped through the cameras. Footsteps, and Chica had returned to the dining room, frozen in place and staring right at the camera in a way that made his stomach twist in discomfort.

Camera 2A, over by the supply closet and Pirate’s Cove. He expected to see it empty, or at the worst, find Bonnie silhouetted in the back. It was about time for the rabbit to make another round his way, after all.

But instead, he found Foxy.

The realization took a moment too long to sink in, the broken down, rust red fox sprinting down the corridor, broken jaw waving and snapping.

Oh no. Oh, no no no no-!

With all the speed and reflex he could muster, mastered from all his hours on the clock, he sprung forward. The chair fell over and the tablet toppled to the ground, but if it was any more broken than it had been before, he couldn’t care less. His palm mashed against the door button, mechanisms moving into place. The door began to slide shut, the animatronic fox’s heels scraping the floor, and-

Foxy skidded into the room, metal feet screeching against the cheap tile as the door firmly fell into place behind him. Mike’s throat closed up around a horrified scream, and he scrambled back, throwing out one hand to defend himself.

He was trapped. There was no way for him to escape the room, now -- he had been backed up against the opposite door, having been too preoccupied with Foxy to open it after Chica left! His breathing turned shallow and frantic, his eyes wide and shining as the animatronic towered over him, jaw permanently stretched in a horrific smile. Cold, robotic hands (well, a hand and a deady-sharp hook) stretched for him, grabbed at his shirt’s collar, that stupid hat having defied all odds and fallen loose, forgotten to the floor.

 _This is it,_ his mind supplied. _I’m going to die here._

The pirate fox yanked him up, pointed hook tearing into the fabric. The animatronic’s stare bore into him, but his vision was growing blurred.

He hadn’t even noticed he was crying.

There was the familiar rush and squeal of a door opening, and he was being dragged down a hallway, the metal of Foxy’s hook slicing into his shoulder and making him cry out in pain. He couldn’t do much to fight when he couldn’t even climb to his feet, and if he was making any impact on Foxy, the animatronic didn’t show it.

Foxy tossed him into the backstage room, the other animatronic characters looming around him, eyes glinting in such a way that betrayed the fact that they _knew_ what was happening. They were gathered, waiting, for that pesky free endoskeleton to finally be put in its place.

The dull, metal table had been cleared, only an empty suit waiting. He hadn’t even noticed it earlier, a dark-eyed, ashy-grey creature with a prominent snout hiding rows of teeth.

A _wolf._

Padded hands gripped his shoulders, torso, legs. He was forced to his feet, then towards the table, the suit readied.

The six-AM bell wouldn’t be saving him tonight.

He heard screams in his ears, but they sounded distant, as though they originated from far, far away. Vaguely, he knew that they were his.

This truly was the end of Mike Schmidt.

His last living sensation was that of a horrible pain as his body was crushed into a suit and ripped apart by the countless metal contraptions within.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter one done! I've also already finished chapter two, so I'll be posting that update tomorrow. :)


	2. Chapter 2

His mind was fuzzy, consciousness swimming between the line of awake and asleep, life and death. Everything was a blur, his thoughts almost nonsensical as he found himself struggling to recount the events of the previous hours.

What had happened? Chica had been at the door, and then…?

Groggily, he tried to open his eyes, finding his eyelids heavy and uncooperative, almost as if they were thick and glued shut, crusty and dry. His limbs were numb, not with the tingling of pins-and-needles, but rather pure dead weight. Had he passed out?

He attempted to raise a hand to his face, but...

He couldn’t do it. It was as if his limbs were purely dead weight, stiff and unresponsive, like he had fallen asleep with his arm splayed out at an odd angle and it had been left weakened and lifeless.

It took an eternity, a monumental effort, to force his eyes open, and even then, they almost refused to. He was staring at _something_ flat, a wall or ceiling streaked with shadow, but his balance and orientation had been thrown off. It was too dark to pick out anything decorating it to tell where he was, and in the very edges of his peripheral vision, a light rhythmically blinked on and off.

Where was he? It seemed that he had been locked away in some dark room, watched by a distant onlooker. That was to say, assuredly _not_ his apartment.

First came the questioning, the deep-rooted growing fear of something he resolutely wished _not_ to confirm. He tried to move again, finding his limbs dragging like stone, body unwilling to cooperate.

But once he had enough control to blink and open his eyes, he soon found he could look around. And with a growing, swirling dread settling into his chest, he hesitantly trailed his gaze away from the wall, downwards, lower, vision landing on his legs and chest…

And he nearly gagged, horror and fear and denial bubbling up like insects crawling beneath his skin. Enveloped in the dark, heavy shadows of the room, steaks of a red so dark it was nearly black, dull and dried, dripped along his torso and seeped from the joints of an animatronic’s legs. Rivulets of blood intertwined with wires that spread across the floor, cords twisting together and forming a macabre web that ended with him in the middle, plugged in like a machine.

The crimson that caked the room was blood.

_His blood_.

Then came the realization -- the sudden understanding that _no one_ could survive that. He would have bled out, seized up from the trauma and passed long before anyone would have found him.

His chest -- no, it was the thick torso of an animatronic suit, fur a distinct, light shade of gray -- wasn’t moving.

That was to say, _he wasn’t breathing._

The numbness that had initially overtaken his form had crept through him, rooting itself in his mind. He was unable to think, to comprehend the situation, shock overpowering all reasoning as he desperately tried reorganizing the puzzle pieces he had already put together with the hopes of finding a different solution.

Surely he was just…

This made no sense, it had to be that he…

It...it can’t be that he…

No…

No.

_No!_

He was dead. There was no way around it -- he had died, kicked the bucket, bought the farm. Murdered, just as the man whose training recordings had saved him during those first few nights had warned him about.

He should be sobbing, gasping and pleading with some heavenly being that it wasn’t true. But he was unable to move. In his mind, the terror repeated and looped, but he could only remain still, his only movement looking around with a horrified glint to his eyes. Dead. Not alive. Six feet under, or he should have been.

But that was impossible! He was aware, his mind persisted, and he was still conscious within a body. There was an awful sensation burning in him, the sort of breath-stealing horror as his spirit seemed to cry out in realizing without a doubt what had happened, but his mind refusing to accept it.

This wasn’t the afterlife, heaven or hell.

_It was Freddy Fazbear’s, an establishment bursting with family fun!_

He couldn’t feel his tongue in his mouth, couldn’t peak out the faint thudding of his heart in his ears. Even if he was paralyzed, he would have felt _himself_ if he were still all there. Now, there was nothing. He was empty, a ghost in the machine. His body destroyed, his soul bound and trapped. He saw through a mask of a suit’s head, but from the perspective of being trapped within and looking out.

And he knew there was no room for an intact corpse to stand upright within a suit. Instead, it would have been crushed into the torso, legs and arms snapped when they could not fit alongside the endoskeletons in the limbs, head forced down within.

Was this what death was really like?

Voices sounded off in the background.

“Freddy, it’s nearly six. We’ll have to move him soon before the day begins!” a girl’s voice hummed, a metallic _twang_ ringing in each word.

_Freddy?_

“...I guess. Just put him in the old storage room for now.”

“Well, then h-h-hurry up! We’d b-b-best be getting to it,” A third voice growled, broken and distorted.

“May as well,” hummed a fourth.

They were talking about him. What they’d do with him. How they’d _dispose_ of him.

Mike had had the “pleasure” of exploring the establishment once before during daytime hours -- back when he had first been interviewed, to be specific. It wasn’t a very large place: one main room with seperate tables for each party and two distinct stages that rotated between performances, a kitchen, a broom closet, and management office, the last of which doubled for just about everything. The office worked the PA system and controlled the music, along with working the cameras and containing the building’s phone line and storage for documents and files.

There wasn’t much in the way of storage in the building, and surely they weren’t going to be throwing him in the broom closet. There was a small storage closet behind Pirate’s Cove for props, sure, and there was the walk-in freezer entered through the kitchen for pizza ingredients, but where…?

Wait. The old storage closet. There was one that connected to the backstage storage, but it was always locked, as far as he knew. Surely they wouldn’t lock him away!

They. Surely _they_ wouldn’t take him away.

Flashes of tangled thoughts swept through his mind, and he swallowed a hiss as he struggled to make sense of it all.

He was dead, but alive, his mind remaining and his body destroyed.

The animatronics who had killed him were there, and they were _talking._ Plotting, planning what to do with him, how they would lock him away. They were _sentient._

A sliver of light appeared from behind him, casting his shadow over a newly brightened wall. It grew and expanded, grew strange and warped, until the now-open door hit the wall with a crash. The shelves rattled just slightly, and a portion of him vaguely wondered how they were so loud now, when he had so rarely heard anything more than soft, padded footsteps.

Figures appeared, blotting out the glaring light, one...two, three, four animatronics crowding the doorway, bursting inside, a cacophony of robotic sounds and movements.

And a moment later, it was Chica who stood in front of him. Half her face hidden in darkness, the other illuminated from the doorway; she stood in front of the camera he knew from experience must have been in the corner of the room, concealing the constant blink, blink, blink of the light.

Segmented fingers waved in front of his face as Chica parted her beak in a mockery of a cruel grin, appearing delighted to see him as she squealed, “Hello! Wyless, are you in there? I can see your eyes move; can you hear me?”

Wyless?

_Wyless the Gray Wolf, an adventuring pup who sails the seas with Foxy the Red Fox and Tamarin the Bengal Tiger, coming soon to your local Freddy Fazbear’s!_

Almost involuntarily, he choked out a yelp as she put her hand on his shoulder and shook him. He knew for a fact that there was no way he was hiding his fearful expression, the way it twisted at him, even if it was only his eyes that he controlled, and only static-filled syllables that he produced. His jaw jerked ever-so-slightly slightly in time as he spoke–or attempted too, at least. The noises he made didn’t form any words, instead twisting into a static-filled noise of fear, and while some similarities threaded through his words, the voice he produced didn’t sound or feel like the one he knew. His words didn’t hum in his throat; instead, they seemed to emanate from nowhere, and when he listened to himself speak, he could barely recognize the voice he produced.

“N-n-no-” he cried, finally managing a single word, even if it glitched and hiccuped all the way through. Freddy stepped into his field of vision and motioned for the others to grab his arms. He wanted to twist away, but while he felt as though he had gained some control, his fingers only twitched despite his greatest efforts.

With a snap of her wrist, Chica pulled at the wires and cords. They clicked and twisted, and he wanted to shudder at the odd sensation of being cut off from extra oxygen as they slithered away from him and fell to the floor with a dull thud and a metallic _snik_ . _They were charging the endoskeleton?_

Unyielding hands gripped him by the arms, and his mind’s eye returned to his final living moments in parallel, being forced to his death. Freddy gave a stiff nod, and the others dragged him forward; when they slid him off the table, his legs buckled beneath him and his weight fell fully on those carrying him as they continued their march.

They manhandled him and dragged him forward, ignoring his pleas that he couldn’t quite articulate. Even with the sinking numbness filling him, mind not in control of his body like it should have been, he was still able to faintly feel the tile floor as he was pulled along, an awful freezing chill from the ground seeping into him. “S-s-sto...stop-p-p…” In despair, he wanted to struggle, he wanted to _run_ away, but he could only lay still, feet sliding along the tiles. His hands twitched slightly, but every small bit of control he had was sluggish and unhelpful, and they heaved him up against the wall several feet away and threw open the door to the storage space -- the one that had was always locked, or at the very least off-limits, lacking a camera as the animatronics never wandered in there.

The storage space was small and compact, mostly filled with old junk -- moldy boxes, an old arcade machine…

And another animatronic, one that appeared broken down and half-destroyed.

A hand pressed into his back and he fell forward, collapsing onto the floor of the room. As the door closed behind him, Chica quickly added, “Just wait here for a little while! We don’t want the day staff to run into you; it would be quite a _surprise!_ ”

The door shut, closing off her hollow giggling while Mike groaned from the sensation of the sudden impact, as dulled and stunted but still painful in some odd way as it was. While he was unable to get to his feet, his head was tilted to the side, leaving him watching the room from below.

When the door shut beyond him, he had assumed it would plunge the room into darkness once more, but instead he found himself bathed in the faint glow of a cheap fluorescent bulb that hummed softly in the background. The light above was weak, though, and while he could still make out the contents of the room, the shadows around him were hazy and pronounced.

Footsteps surrounded him, the sort that made his anxiety spike from his time taking the night shift, and suddenly the light above was blocked by a silhouette whose features Mike could just barely make out.

They were a rabbit, a suit that looked similar to Bonnie’s, but was a bit less bulky, and significantly more broken down. Holes and rips littered their suit, one ear’s joint broken and limp, arms crossed -- and more importantly, they seemed to be glaring at him, with eyes that gleamed silver and were decidedly _not_ impressed with the situation.

“Of course they had to dump their latest ‘achievement’ in here with me.” They- _he?_ \- seemed to have a masculine voice, though anything else Mike could glean from how they sounded was overshadowed by the fact that their voice seemed to just be _dripping_ in annoyance. “So, what, they got you too? Thought I heard screaming.”

It took a momentous effort of strength and willpower, but Mike managed to roll his eyes up to see the animatronic standing above him at a better angle.

And what he saw was another man who had died, dressed in an animatronic suit of gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally the second half of the first chapter, but since it got a little long, I decided to split that first chapter into two. Springtrap is introduced, staying in the old storage room -- considering his suit is certainly out of commission, he gets to stay tucked out of sight during the day and most nights. The lock on the door was put there by management so that they would have a place to, err, dispose of old material without any unfortunate day workers sliding in, but as expected, the gang and Springtrap have gotten their hands on copies of the key. Springtrap is perfectly happy to spend 23 hours a day stewing in his room, but is quite ticked that a handful of meddling kids have thrown a walking corpse into the storage room, especially since he specifically hangs out in there to avoid them.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally written over eight chapters before being abandoned before it was finished. I plan to rewrite the first eight chapters (although in splitting the chapters up differently, I may end up with more or less than eight short parts) to get a feel for writing for this fandom again, and if the story fleshes out well in that time, will continue to see the story’s completion.
> 
> Comments make my day -- I love to hear what people think of my works!


End file.
